Stupid Girl
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [Anorexia] Seusu Ryoko didn't think she should feel sorry for people like Inui Mana...or even her dear twin brother Ryoji. Maybe she could have if she'd known freedom and love. And maybe she could have learnt if she hadn't crossed paths with Shikabane Toshirou.
1. Part 1

**A/N:** Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, D9 – write a threeshot.

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><p><strong>Stupid Girl<br>Part 1**

She wondered if she should feel sorry for the girl. Her brother liked her. Then again, her brother was an idiot.

She honestly didn't know how they were related. Why they looked like clones instead of fraternal twins. Why she had to put up with him –

Well, that was an easy one. He was her stupid twin brother.

– and why she had to put up with her legs like this.

That was her parents fault. Deserved to be dead, the both of them, for neatly tucking her away in her prison until she just _screamed_. And snapped, she supposed. She had a hard time convincing the doctors to leave her alone. Her stupid brother often said they'd put her in a strait-jacket if she kept on talking like that…

And that was all well and fine because she was only talking to _him_ like that anyway.

But then she found a good doctor. A doctor that understood her: the sort of prison she'd lived in. Understood how her almost breaking her back and being unable to love her legs wasn't _her_ fault but the fault of those good for nothing parents of hers. Who understood that the visitations she had with her twin didn't consist of her molesting him or going crazy with needles but giving him a firm reminder of things he's forgotten about.

Like getting a crush on that stupid _girl_. Didn't he remember what was between his legs? Or what wasn't?

That was all their parents' fault too. Locking her away and letting him loose and making him guilty and her resentful. If only he'd been a girl or she a guy – but she could change that.

She had changed it. For a while. Before she was hospitalised the first time. Before her parents paid quite a bit of money to get her out and remove all the records, and then locked her away for real and beat her within an inch of consciousness for all the trouble she'd caused.

As if that would have changed anything.

Actually, it did. It made things worse. Made that prison more unbearable. Made her want to be her stupid twin even more.

And then a solution crept in to her mind, so brilliantly simple she couldn't _fathom_ how she hadn't thought of it before.

They'd swap places.

Ryoji would do it, because he was always feeling so guilty and did everything she said. Ryoji would do it – and she'd be able to taste freedom. Honest freedom.

That stupid car had to ruin everything, and no amount of money was going to get her out of the hospital this time.

At least it wasn't with threats of strait-jackets. She couldn't do much being stuck to the bed. Until Toshirou came along of course.

And that stupid little girl who'd toyed with her brother.

It would be both revenge and her way out.


	2. Part 2

**Stupid Girl  
>Part 2<strong>

Toshirou was the first to give her an option. Everybody else said she'd be stuck like that forever – in a hospital bed, unable to walk again – and she resented them. She resented Toshirou too, but that was just a farce. She liked him and just didn't want to admit. Even to herself.

He put up with her even longer than Ryoji did. And Ryoji couldn't _not_ put up with her.

That's why she'd made him get the transmitter. He was always so far away. Avoiding her. Living nice and free – though she always made sure to rein him in. It wasn't fair, after all. That even now, even after their good for almost nothing parents were dead, Ryoji wasn't spending every second of the day with her.

That was also their parents fault, though. Not giving them enough access to their inheritance to cover hospital bills and living expenses _outside_ their prison of a house.

Really, it was just enough for the hospital bills and food for one person. If that one person didn't try lavishing himself with anything, seeing as Ryoko was stuck with hospital food unless her brother brought her something more delectable to eat. Which he only did when she ordered her to.

Sometimes, when she was feeling a little sorry for him, she wondered what he'd bring if she didn't always make him. But then he wouldn't show up during her musings and she'd get angry again. And order him there. Because it wasn't fair that he was outside all the time and never got hurt like that and she'd gone out _one time_ and it ended with her unable to walk again.

So when Toshirou gave her an option, she really didn't care what or who it would cost. She just wanted it.

And she cared even less when she heard the girl was Inui Mana. That bitch that had forced her brother out of school. Not that Ryoji had liked school. Not that Ryoko had liked Ryoji going to school. But the only one allowed to hurt her brother was _her_.

So she felt a tiny bit off-put by the fact that this doctor was perfectly happy to kill someone for their spinal cord – as well as the fact that she was perfectly willing to accept it. But the times she spent glaring out the window at that happy world where people wandered happily and _freely_ were too much. If they were enough to make her hate the brother she'd been born with, then it was more than enough for her to condone murder.

And it wasn't like she didn't already have blood on her hands. From her brother's genitals, when she'd tired of fingering that organ she'd never had out of curiosity and a sense of bitterness because _that was all that'd differentiated them back then_ and cut them with a pair of sharp kitchen scissors.

That was her first hospital admission. And his. And all that money that had shut up the doctors and the records.

But this time it was the doctor offering it. The doctor agreeing.

And she was smiling, almost giddy, for the first time in _years._


	3. Part 3

**Stupid Girl  
>Part 3<strong>

Ryoji delivered her: all nicely packed in a suitcase. And he didn't even realise what he was doing.

None of them did. Not Ryoji. Not the entire Shikabane family – except Toshirou who'd concocted the whole plan. And most certainly not pitiful Inui Mana who she didn't pity one bit.

Ryoji had told her all about that girl and she was pathetic.

But at least she was good for something. Giving Ryoko back her freedom.

It was a hard few months that followed that, but she was stubborn. Not like her stupid doctor that somehow got his legs eaten (or amputated after they were irreparably damaged after being eaten) because of a lie _he'd_ told had gotten a little out of hand.

She was only a little bit sorry, and maybe only that because freedom wasn't too far off now.

He wondered how she did. Worked hard. Hung on to something that had seemed so hopeless.

The answer was easy. It was all she had. All she desired. All she'd screamed for since the day her parents had decided to shut her away and make her the perfect doll.

At this point, it was all she _was._ So putting up with the therapy was no headache at all.

Afterwards, she walked about on crutches in the hospital's garden – that she'd never bothered going to before, even pushed along by wheelchair – while Toshirou was brought by a kindly old volunteer that gave them a cherry wave and his number when he was ready to return. And she wondered what sort of person she was now. Whether this bitter hateful and murderous – because she'd agreed and now she had a dead girl's spine in her back even if she hadn't liked that girl one bit – self of hers would change.

She supposed she didn't really care if it did change. Ryoji – Ryoji would be on a looser leash if she could go out and get what she wanted for herself. A taste of freedom. A taste of what the world _really_ offered. But he would still be in her reach. Her other self. A _part_ of herself. A part that could never run away.

That was one of the things she didn't like about Toshirou. He didn't understand their connection. That was one of the things she didn't like about Ryoji either. Stupid Ryoji. He _should_ know. He was a part of her.

She commented one day that Toshirou might want to reign in his little sister. He just gave her an amused look, but she hadn't been joking. She didn't like Inui Mana and now she had a new spine, courtesy of that stupid little girl. Hanako was another story, but she was stealing her Ryoji away as well.

Her face twisted in anger and Toshirou laughed and said jealousy wasn't becoming now that she had her legs back again.

But she was a murderer, wasn't she. What did legs have to do with that?

She had her freedom now – but that didn't mean she _would_ change. Or could.


End file.
